Expertise
by Midwinter Monday
Summary: How do evil overlords come by their worldly experience? Who teaches the dark anti-hero everything he knows about sex and seduction? Questions one probably shouldn't ask — but once you do the temptation to answer is irresistible. Valentine, the summer he turns sixteen. A first-sexual-awakening (anti-)romance for Valentine's(!) Day, with apologies for irresponsible fluff.
1. Beginning

**_UPDATE VALENTINE'S DAY 2018: CHAPTER TWO IS NOW UP!..._**

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 _Author's Note:_

 _On the whole, I try not to pry into my characters' sex lives_ _ _(ok, I do know they're really Clare's characters...)._ And of them all, I'm especially disposed to respect Valentine's privacy. Not a man to take vulgar curiosity in good part!_

 _So I'm not really sure where this little fic came from — an unexpected window into his adolescence which just opened up without warning. It's an outtake really, something I should know better than to post: a scrap of intimate personal history which doesn't belong in the stories I'm telling. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that it — or something like it — is true. And as his (self-appointed) biographer, I'm inclined to let the record stand!_

 _I confess I was initially of two minds about whether the events in this story really happened._ _ _ _ _ _I'm quite certain Jocelyn is the only girl Valentine has ever loved, and I'm nearly as certain that he is not the innocent that she is when he finally sets about winning her. Which seemed to make something like this encounter inevitable. On the other hand,____ if anyone strikes me as fundamentally a prude, it's Valentine. It's certainly hard to imagine that he has ever approved of casual sex: not so much that he considers it immoral, as out of a kind of fastidiousness about human passions and a deep contempt for unbridled sensual gratification of all kinds. _

__But setting yourself to learn what sexual pleasure is, how to harness and I suppose resist it, is not the same as indulging in it. Valentine is relentlessly instrumental, about his own pleasure and displeasure as much as anything else — and he is not an ascetic. If investigating the limits of pure physicality turns out to be an exceptionally agreeable task, he is quite prepared to enjoy himself. And as he says, anyone shut away all summer with the appalling Reinhardt Morgenstern is entitled to a little compensatory amusement. But casual sex fundamentally holds no appeal for him. Having mastered the skills and gained the knowledge he needs, he has no desire to repeat the experience.__ _ _ _There is only one woman in the world he desires or ever will desire. Which is part of his tragedy...___

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Canon: My fics take the original _City of Bones_ trilogy as canon. (For more about why I haven't read the later MI books, see my profile).

As always, everything in this fic belongs to the incomparable Cassandra Clare: characters, story and universe, of course, but also tone and language and imagery, which I've borrowed shamelessly to try to get closer to the feel of her story. To the extent that I've succeeded, the credit is entirely hers.

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Raven-haired and alarmingly pretty, with snapping eyes and a lively, forward manner, she arrives at the Morgenstern manor the summer after his fourth year at school: replacement for the kitchen maid abruptly summoned home to her widowed mother after her father got himself decapitated by a wandering Tankuni demon. She's older than he is by several years, old enough to discharge her household duties with the brisk competence his father expects of his servants — and to be thoroughly practised in the deployment of her manifold physical charms.

In hindsight, he's not quite certain when he became aware of her, but somehow her path is forever crossing his on the narrow stairs and dim passageways of the rambling and ancient manor house: flattening herself respectfully against the wainscoting to let him pass, but with a warmth in her eyes and a challenge in the half-smile lingering on her lips that makes him fascinatingly aware of her body inches away from his. The invitation is plain, would be obvious even to a sensibility far less acute than his: _if you want me I am yours, to do what you want with._

He has other things to think about, but he dockets the fact for further consideration, because she is exceptionally attractive, with a tidy, curving figure her demure uniform only barely contains, and a knowing, almost disquieting gleam underneath her black lashes that undeniably stirs his blood.

His father would profoundly disapprove: in these matters, as so many others, Reinhardt Morgenstern's views are rigidly straitlaced. But disregarding his father's inexhaustible disapproval — flouting, it even — is one of his projects for this holiday.

Not that he is under any illusions about the girl, or his own feelings: this is entirely an opportunity for a little recreation — and training. Aside from a few juvenile kissing-games beneath the mistletoe, it's an aspect of life he has not so far seriously addressed himself to.

In the long view, of course, he knows exactly where he is going, has known it almost from the day she arrived at the school, red hair straggling wildly from the knot at the back of her neck as she and Lucian dragged her vast trunk of possessions up the front steps.

But there's no hurry there. It will be some time yet before she comes tame to his hand. For now, the first rule of the huntsman is patience: invisible and absolute. And in the meantime...

In the meantime, he decides, cantering dutifully at his father's heels on the latest of the old man's idiotic, self-appointed forest patrols, he's got an interesting new set of skills to acquire and hone.

And surely he deserves a little entertainment in a long, dire summer of dancing attendance on his father's iron whims, and his crackpot one-man war on Downworld — as though the mongrel races were the biggest threat the Nephilim were up against. Really, the old warrior's obsession with charting the growth of Idris's Downworld populations is getting close to a mania.

But there's no arguing with his father. He has learnt that lesson the hard way. Better to keep your head down: do as you're told, at least as far as anyone can see — and perfect the art of subterfuge. Reinhardt Morgenstern may have a heavy hand, but in the last instance he isn't all that clever. Not as clever as his son, at any rate. And if the flinty old tyrant is too pig-headed to see beyond the tedious Downworld bee in his bonnet — well it's been obvious for some time that if the Nephilim are to be saved from destruction, it's no use looking to the older generation to do it.

He's stuck out here for another six weeks; six weeks when he'll be lucky if any word from Alicante or his promising little band of acolytes makes its way into this remote fastness. Few Shadowhunter families live this deep into the wild lands by Lake Lyn — and his father's unsociability is matched only by his rooted dislike of the Glass City and its inhabitants. But he has his books and his experiments, one or two of which are showing exciting signs of promise; and whatever he may think of his father, there is no one in the world who will train him harder or better.

And then there is the girl...

So when he walks into the library the next day to find without surprise that she is already there, poised halfway up the tall library ladder with her duster in hand and her neat skirt and apron looking suddenly delightfully and indecorously short, he greets her with a lazy smile and crosses slowly to stand beneath her, shoulders propped against the carved bookcase. She colours fetchingly and smiles back at him, a slow provocative smile. There is no question she knows he can see straight up her dress.

For the space of a heartbeat, she gazes down at him; and then her smile widens enchantingly. Holding out her bare arms to him with a charming little lift of her wrists, she murmurs,

"Lift me down, Master Valentine?"

Her skin is the colour of fresh cream, flawless and smooth as the alabaster vases that flank his father's mantelpiece; her small hands are delicate and shapely. Even at this distance, he can see the pulse fluttering in her throat.

Reaching up, he curves his hands around her waist and swings her lightly down. She's heavier than she looks, her flesh firm and warm as a sun-ripe peach beneath his fingers. He can feel her breathing accelerate as he sets her smoothly on her feet, hands lingering at her waist. He's forgotten how diminutive she is: her dark, glossy head level with his shoulder, scarcely taller than the cunning little faerie assassin he killed in yesterday's raid. The myrtle snares she'd ambushed him with turned his cold steel to dust; in the end, he'd strangled her with his bare hands. The clean, cold, expert violence of it still sends a cool ripple of satisfaction through him, as he remembers.

But the girl in his hands now is looking at him with an expression in her eyes that sets a very different shiver of excitement flickering through his nerves. He can feel every line of her body against his, as if the tiny space that remains between them were already gone. For the space of a breath, he gazes down at the heart-shaped face raised to his, listening to the drumbeat of his own pulse and watching every tiny change in her expression, the life-blood electric in his veins. Her lips are parted; the flush in her cheeks rosy and warm. He hears her breath catch. Then, cupping his hand in the raw silk of her hair, he bends his head and kisses her.

She smells of roses and soap and freshly-laundered linen. The soft curves of her body press closer against him as her arms slide around his neck, her kiss deepening, small fingers digging into the bare skin of his shoulder with a sharp, sweet pleasure his senses can't entirely distinguish from pain. And then he is kissing her fiercely back, his mouth hard and purposeful on hers, desire coursing dark as ichor through his veins. With one detached part of his mind he notes the quickening of his own breathing, the queer lightness in his limbs, the white fire spinning through his nerve ends in bright showers of sparks as he gives his senses up to pleasure. This is uncharted territory. He has a lot to learn.

Ignorance is not a state that recommends itself to Valentine Morgenstern though. He doesn't intend to remain there for long.

After that, they meet almost every day unless his father has requisitioned him for some fresh expedition: in the library; by the tilting ground; in the empty storeroom at the top of the attic stairs, the light from the dormer windows throwing diamonds of shadow across her vivid face that spill fascinatingly down her arching neck and collarbones and on down beyond, their quick gasps echoing off the dusty rafters. They are careful and discreet — both of them have long practice at the art of evading detection — but the ever-present possibility of being caught gives an extra frisson to their encounters, and keeps their clothes on, more or less.

Which is fine with him for now. He has been master of his body for as long as he can remember. Self-discipline is the Shadowhunter's first, most indispensable weapon, as his father never tires of reminding him, and he has been brought up to ignore the demands of the flesh — hunger, cold, weariness, pain — from the time he could walk. He's got all summer to master this intriguing new art, and he intends to take this methodically, as he would any other skill.

He can see too that it is driving her a little crazy; and as he acknowledges to himself, the banked fire of his own desires, the awareness of their mutual hunger, pent-up together a millimetre — a tinder spark — away from combustion, rather sharpens the pleasure of it all. No reason not to take his time...

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 _ **UPDATE 2018: Ok, grovel: it's taken me a year to get back to this. But the next chapter is NOW UP, and with any luck it won't take me until next February to get the rest finished! Happy Valentine's Day everyone...**_

 _A/N (Original): I'd planned on posting this all in one go, but I'm running out of time if it's to go up for Valentine's Day! So here's a first installment anyway. The rest follows shortly — it's nearly done!_

 _And for my faithful readers — I know it's been ages since I updated! I haven't given up on my unfinished fics, I promise. They just got...more complicated than I expected. I've got a couple of other stories on the table as well I hope to get up this spring. But this little fic just kind of insinuated itself into my head and demanded to be written NOW. So I did. Hope you enjoy it! Let me know...  
_

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Anyone new to my stories and interested in the young Valentine should have a look at **The Circle** **Game,** my school-era fic about Jocelyn and Valentine, which takes place about a year after this fic, or **Wednesday's Children** , a story from the early, happy days of his marriage to Jocelyn. For a darker romance, see my _City of Bones_ era fic **Odi et Amo,** which follows Valentine in the days and hours before he comes looking for Jocelyn. Of course dearest to my heart are my 'Songs of Innocence' cycle of stories about Jace's childhood with Valentine: **Fall 1997, Discipline, Chiaroscuro** , **Lessons** and **An Orchard So Young in the Bark.**

And for Valentine's Day, there's always my Jace and Clary story, **Permanent Marks** , set in the immediate aftermath of City of Glass. That fic is a lot of things, but above all, it's a love story...

 _—MM_


	2. The Ripeness is All

_A/N:  
Apologies again that it's taken me SO LONG to get back to this story! Anyway, here you go: Chapter Two. Happy Valentine's(!) Day. I hope it was worth the wait.  
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To a worldly, wayward and exceptionally pretty young woman at the peak of her sexual powers, the attractions of self-denial are naturally somewhat less compelling.

Indeed, she would cheerfully admit that it's driving her more than a little crazy — the whole situation is maddening, tantalising, a masochistic exercise in frustration beyond anything she's ever known.

Clearly, the boy is inexperienced. In fact — she reflects with a reminiscent smile as she straightens the books he's left piled the length of the library table — she would wager a week's pay she's the first girl he has ever kissed. He's a quick study though, no doubt about that. She's taught any number of boys their business; but this one scarcely needs instruction, seems to know what he's about by instinct — a natural, you might say.

For a moment she stands by the table, her eyes fixed unseeing on the dusty volume in her hand, and thinks about the promise implicit in that trained and limber body, the clever hands and long, implacable mouth...

He's going to be good this one, very good.

And there is something else about him too, something she struggles to put her finger on, but it puts her in mind of the glint of fire on steel, bright as the colour of blood. As though there were a dark flame burning inside him that sets his vivid face ablaze. It fascinates her, that light, but it frightens her too: the fiery brilliance of it that seems to cast everything around it in blinding light and shadow until the softer hues of the world are burnt away to nothing.

Giving her head an impatient shake, she replaces the book with brisk exactitude on the top of the stack. She is not a girl given to flights of fancy, or profound perception. Nonetheless, she is aware that the boy who has chanced across her path this summer is something out of the ordinary; and the thought of taking him sets her pulse racing with a breathless anticipation she hasn't felt in years.

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As things turn out, it is several weeks before Reinhardt Morgenstern is called away on an errand which even that grim task-master can't find a reason to drag his son along on. She gives the old man an hour's start, and then sets out purposefully in search of his son, a little flame of anticipation flickering dark and sweet through her veins.

It takes longer than she expects to track him down, but in the end she runs him to ground at the archery butts that lie beyond the orchard at the forest edge. The morning is already scorching hot — in the past few days, the blistering heat of late summer has gathered itself to a kind of blazing apogee — but he has been out here since breakfast-time, the heaviest longbow he can draw in his hands.

She watches him for a few moments from the shade of one of the apple trees, admiring the effortless display of athleticism as he plucks an arrow from the quiver at his feet, nocks it and straightens in a single economical motion, the bowstring already drawing back, before launching it unerringly across the empty meadow that lies between him and the straw-filled target.

He's nearly as tall as his father now, though it's hard to see much of that dour ascetic in the vivid young man before her, unless perhaps it's in the high-bred lines of his patrician face, and the look of steely purpose in his black eyes as he pulls back the great arc of yew and drives arrow after arrow into the target with a dull, savage thud she can hear clear across the meadow. His shirt is off — his only concession to the ferocious August heat — and she can see the sun gleam on the sculpted muscles of his chest and arms, his whole body sheened in sweat, bright as a bronze statue in the fierce sunlight.

The centre of the target is crammed with the feathered shafts, packed together tight as a stook of corn; it's a wonder, she thinks, that he can find a place to sink another arrow — and indeed, as she watches, the next arrow splits one of the standing shafts neatly in half. He lowers the bow with an impatient sound, and striding down the long, waving expanse of grass, begins yanking the arrows out of the straw with savage efficiency.

She doesn't think she has moved, but something must have given her presence away, because his head snaps around abruptly, his sharp gaze picking her out instantly from the pool of shadow in which she is standing. Displeasure is plain on his handsome face.

"Caught," she says with a little laugh, lifting her hands in mock surrender as she steps forward into the sunlight, eyes on the tight lines of his face. He may be unaware of it, but the bow in his hands, as he swings around to face her, is nocked and drawn and pointing straight at her heart.

On second thought, she's sure he knows it very well.

"That's a tom-fool place to be hanging about," he says in a hard voice, and his tone is as cutting as glass. "In the name of the Angel, what were you thinking? You could get yourself killed, skulking in the shadows at the butt-end of an archery range — as you very well ought to know."

His eyes are black with anger, his mouth a hard, flat line. The resemblance to his father is suddenly much easier to see.

Arranging her expression in what she hopes is a look of amusement, she allows her gaze to travel pointedly from his scowling face to the jam-packed bull's-eye and back again, to the bow still unnervingly fixed on her breast.

 _"_ A terrible risk," she agrees dryly, ignoring the faint prickling that has started at the back of her neck. "Sure it's a miracle I'm still breathing."

He doesn't smile. But she has her own methods for managing sulky boys. She hopes they work on murderously angry ones too.

Lowering her hands with a quick, graceful movement, she fixes luminous blue eyes on his furious black ones and says coaxingly, "Valentine...?".

He is still glaring at her, but she returns his gaze tranquilly, and after a moment he lowers the bow. She is annoyed to find her heart is beating rather fast in her chest.

Taking another step towards him, she peeps up at him from under impossibly thick lashes and murmurs "I'll not deny that voice of yours is a lovely thing, Master Valentine.

"But it wasn't a scolding I came all this way to have from you." Her voice is low, her meaning impossible to mistake. Holding his eyes, she slides a hand slowly, coaxingly up his bare arm, its sinews hard as whipcord beneath her fingers.

"Well whatever you've been sent here to do, I'd advise you to get on with it promptly." His tone is curt. "My father is in an unpleasant temper this morning. I wouldn't test his patience."

It's one of the reasons he's down here, working off his own roiling fury where it won't rebound onto him with redoubled violence. He should have known better than to raise the topic of the Mortal Cup with that pig-headed, antediluvian, hidebound, obtuse monomaniac...

"Oh, but I have all the time in the world." The glimmer of mischief that flits across her face is one he has become very familiar with in the past few weeks. "My orders from Cook were to have a _thorough_ search through the orchard for any early apples ready for the picking. Seems your father fancies a pie when he returns tonight."

The news that his father has ridden out comes as a surprise to him. The old man had certainly not minced his words over the breakfast table: indeed it had been made abundantly clear that he could expect a full afternoon of unpleasant chores under his father's implacable eye. The idea that Reinhardt Morgenstern might also have decided, on reflection, that a judicious cooling-off period might be in order before dealing with his iron-willed and increasingly formidable son does not occur to him.

For a moment, relief wars with annoyance inside his chest: if he'd known, he might have spared himself the last two hours' broiling effort beneath the savage August sun. Then again he reflects, eyeing the bristling target with a certain grim satisfaction, time expended in training is never misspent. He is uncomfortably conscious of having wasted more time than he ought this summer; only a fortnight more and he'll be back at school. He has a lot to do. He means to be the best Shadowhunter in the world, the best there has ever been.

And even that may not be enough. He's only one sword-arm, in a world beset on all sides by hideous threats. Even if he can rekindle the Angel's spirit in his generation as he means to do, and lead them renewed into battle, the Nephilim are so precariously few, and the demons hordes seemingly infinite in number —

The plump hand on his arm closes softly on his bare flesh, fingers warm and gently insistent. "Master Valentine, do you hear me? I've been sent down here to hunt up ripe apples for a pie." She is standing very near to him; her dark glossy head barely reaches his shoulder. He can feel the heat of her body, inches away from his own.

"And it's no small time it will take to pick over every tree in this overgrown orchard of yours." Her voice holds a note of triumph. "Do you know that there are _twenty-seven_ apple-bearing trees in your orchard, Master Valentine? And that's not counting the apples for cider and eating. A long job that."

The blue of her eyes gleams. "Cook's an idiot. I could have told her it's a fool's errand; she'll be lucky to find one blessed apple ready to eat before the harvest moon — not from those old apple trees." An edge of malice creeps into her smile.

"But those as think they know everything need no help from me. I shall return to the kitchen in an hour's time and tell her what the Angel knows is true: in the whole of this orchard there's but a single fruit ripe for taking—"

Her smile deepens, as her eyes travel over his half-naked body, "—and that one is no one's business but mine."

His first impulse is to send her off with a few curt words. But the warmth of her hand on his arm is sending tiny electric shocks through his body, and there's a look in her eyes that makes it hard to drag his gaze away. Like an arrow to its mark, his hand comes up to close over her small one, the beating of his heart insistent in his ears. He's aware that he's gripping her harder than he should, hard enough to hurt, but it doesn't occur to him to loosen his hold.

"You've let that old tyrant get under your skin, haven't you?" she says with a trace of exasperation. But the face she tilts up to him is wide open, and her eyes are very dark — dark as a moonless night, as demon's ichor, as black rage...

"You're an idiot, Master Valentine," she adds when he doesn't answer. "Whatever you're trying to prove, it's not going to raise your father's opinion of your judgement if you keel over with sunstroke." Her tone is crisp, but the thread of unevenness in her voice betrays her, and perhaps, he thinks sardonically, she means it to.

Her fingers are on the bare skin of his shoulder, trailing slowly along his collarbones and down his chest, cool and light as the fitful breeze of evening against his sunburnt skin. Her enchanting, shapely, deft little fingers. He's running with sweat, and his right arm is bloody from elbow to wrist where the bowstring has chafed his unprotected forearm, but she doesn't seem to care. Setting aside the bow, he reaches out to close the space decisively between them, before pausing as a thought strikes him.

"Take care — you'll raise more than a few eyebrows if you saunter into the kitchen with that neat uniform of yours covered in blood."

A wicked light illuminates her face. "Better have it off then, hadn't I?

"Unless—" She lets her gaze linger thoughtfully on his bare skin. "Unless you'd rather put your shirt back on." It's clear from her tone that it's not a serious suggestion. He's not even sure where his shirt is: the far end of the meadow, presumably — unless he took it off before setting out from the manor? It's hard to dredge the memory up; his brain has too many other things to log and sort through: the faint flush that has begun stealing over her cheeks; the rise and fall of her breast beneath the severe black cloth of her dress; the harsh sound of his own breathing, no longer quite steady either; the unmistakable stirrings of desire, dark as banked fire.

Anyway, she doesn't give him the chance. "What you need, Master Valentine, is to get yourself out of this dreadful sun before you're burnt to a crisp." Her voice is honey washed with acid, and the slow smile curving her lips makes him think of pippins rosy and glowing on the tree, ready to fall.

"And I know just the place, cool and dark — and nicely _private_..."

Winding her fingers firmly into his, she sets off before he can open his mouth to reply, making purposefully for the weathered shed, half-buried in ivy, that stands at the forest edge. In winter, it serves for storing the targets. The rest of the year no one gives it a thought from one season's end to the next. He wonders with a distant part of his mind how many young lovers among the servants have taken their pleasure there over the years.

The tall grass whispers around them waist-high as they pass. Beneath the blazing circle of sky, the hot, empty meadow seems to hum with invisible life. Undeniably she is a minx; and undeniably he doesn't care.

He has promised himself he will spend the morning training. But marksmanship isn't the only expertise a warrior needs to acquire. He plans to put his time to excellent use.

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 _I know: what a place to break off!... But I need to think a little about how to go from here. If we propose to peer through the dusty windows of that tumbledown shed, we'll need to creep up on it very circumspectly indeed. It's Valentine in there, remember? Whose hearing is exceptionally acute — who has a kind of sixth sense, in fact, for when he is being followed or watched. I don't fancy getting caught spying on him in these circumstances, not one bit. Still, his attention is likely to be singularly occupied just at the moment. So we'll see..._

Hope you're enjoying this story so far. If you have, please do think about dropping me a comment! It's a great inducement to finishing... —MM


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